You portfolio is high quality in terms of the design and usability. It can’t be that.
It’s very likely your lack of experience with commercial projects that gets you rejected. This is in the silly spirit of “5 years of experience for entry level positions” you will see in many job postings. It’s the state of the industry unfortunately.
Do you have any chance to develop a fullstack app for a charity, club or business in your region? Or an app you can get a few users for, and if it’s just 20 people that are using it regularly? This would already make a big difference.
I could probably check the local shops/charities near me, I think some of them don’t even have a website.
Not sure what kind of app I could build for users. I have some ideas, just don’t think many of them are appealing to an employer, or much to me either tbh. Grabbing people online to use it won’t be a problem though. I’ll have to think some more.
The app is another option. Just build something that other people use in real life and talk about it once you get interviews. I would seek in person contact if you can, to make sure you are not another spammer offering cheap cheap websites.
When you have a project, make sure to keep everything on record from the first design document, over change-log files to the handover. Best place is the README file in the GitHub repository.
I moved the filmflex app into the study-projects repo as I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to show it off. The API I used was updated and broke the movies/series tabs a few weeks after I made it. Eventually I put the app back into its own repo and the commit history was reset as a result (probably was a better way to do this?). It was made around June 2023.
Also worth mentioning, my GitHub commit history graph was reset after updating my email address on the account. Not sure why this happened, but I’ve been making frequent commits since November 2022 (my current GitHub account replaced an old one). In my head the graph is all green!
I’ll try and have a think about some more unique projects and will have a look at the Y Combinator for any work.
I’ve considered internships but due to my current circumstances, obtaining a full time paid job is a high priority.
they do invest across globe 35%+ Y combinator startups are outside US & A.